


An Important Date

by Em_Jaye



Series: Good Madness [18]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Kid Fic, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-25 22:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17129840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Em_Jaye/pseuds/Em_Jaye
Summary: "May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness"-Neil GaimanA very important date





	An Important Date

It had started snowing again by the time they picked Darcy up from the bakery. Thick, fluffy flakes stuck to Darcy’s red beanie and Charlotte’s eyelashes when she tilted her face up and tried to catch them on her tongue. Steve almost changed his plans at the sight of the two of them, giggling and tasting the snow while it sparkled beneath the streetlights. But he’d been putting this off long enough, he reminded himself as they walked to the bus stop. No more excuses.

He checked his watch as he saw the bus that would take them home starting a slow crawl toward them a few blocks away. “Hey,” he began, hoping to sound casual. “I just remembered there’s something I have to do.”

Darcy frowned. “Okay…?”

“Would you mind heading home without me?” he asked, noting that—from the look on both Darcy and Charlotte’s face—he wasn’t being casual at all. “I shouldn’t be too long.”

“Where are you going?” Charlotte was looking especially skeptical.

“Just gotta run an errand,” he lied with a shrug.

“But where?”

“Don’t worry about it,” he countered.

“Can’t we go with you?”

He shook his head. “Not this time.”

“How come?”

“Because I said so,” he said, almost automatically.

“But Dad—”

“But Dad?” It was his turn to frown as he cut her off. “I’m sorry, did you just call me _Butt_ Dad?” he asked, breaking any tension his abrupt departure had caused. Darcy snorted while Charlotte sighed with annoyance. “That’s really rude, Charlotte.” But he caught the hint of a smile on her face which urged him on. “And if I’m Butt Dad—doesn’t that make you Butt Girl?” He pointed to Darcy. “And her Butt Girlfriend?”

“You’re not funny!” Charlotte exclaimed around a peal of giggles.

“Charlotte, we’ve got stuff to do that we don’t want him around for anyway,” Darcy reminded, still laughing.

Their bus arrived, and he leaned in and kissed Darcy quickly. “Okay, Butt Family,” he said and kissed Charlotte’s head before he ruffled her hair. “I shouldn’t be too long.”

“Bye, Butt Dad,” Charlotte quipped as she boarded the bus ahead of Darcy.

Applauding himself on a quality dad joke, Steve watched their bus rumble down the street before he turned in the opposite direction and caught a different bus to Bath Beach. He would have walked if it hadn’t been _quite_ so cold, but the bus got him there faster and he wanted to make sure he caught his usual flower vendor before he closed his cart for the night.

There were two wreaths on the marker when he got there—one left by Krzeminski’s widow, the other by the department. It bore the same note as all the years before—the same note as every firefighter’s memorial— _Rest easy, we’ll take it from here_. The same bottle of bourbon that appeared every year from Jack Thompson’s brother was present as well. Only twice in the last nine years had Steve caught him delivering his Christmas drink—each time he’d cracked the seal and they’d taken a shot together.

Steve brushed away the fresh snow from the marker and laid the roses under the larger wreath—the red of their petals matched its soft velvet ribbon almost exactly. Then he sat down on the stone bench and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Hey sweetheart,” he said softly. “Sorry I’m late.”

 

***

 

Charlotte looked up with a thoughtful frown from the present she’d just finished wrapping. “Do you really think Daddy’s going to like this book?”

Darcy glanced up from her battle with the fancy ribbon she shouldn’t have purchased and scoffed. “Are you kidding me? He’s going to love it.”

The book in question was one Charlotte had found online and asked Darcy to order for her—one of those fill-in-the-blank books where kids could write out all the things they loved and appreciated about their parents. Darcy had agreed that it was just the kind of thing Steve would treasure forever and Charlotte handed over some of her allowance savings, so Darcy could place the order.

She hadn’t shown Charlotte the price tag of the boxing gloves she was wrapping—a joint gift from the two of them—allowing her to believe that the twelve dollars she had contributed covered half the cost instead of just the shipping.

“I hope so,” Charlotte said with a smile. She watched Darcy struggle with the gauzy, wired ribbon for another moment before she got up and came around to the other side of the coffee table. “Here,” she said patiently, and started smoothing out the loops and tails of the mess Darcy had made. “You can’t pull ribbon with wires too tight,” she continued, reshaping her handiwork until it was nearly picture-perfect. “It just makes it want to lock in place.”

Darcy watched her with amazement. “How did you do that?” she asked, seriously. “It’s gorgeous.”

Charlotte bounced her shoulders. “We learned it in Girl Scouts,” she said simply. “And I watched some how-to videos on Youtube. There’s a _lot_ of them.”

“The things I missed out on,” Darcy shook her head as Charlotte returned to her wrapping.

They wrapped in companionable silence for a moment before Charlotte spoke again. “Darcy?”

“Hmm?”

“Did you do anything special with your family for Christmas before you met us?”

Darcy frowned in thought. “Um…” she tilted her head, trying to think if there was anything as ironclad as the BaGerSon Christmas Eve slumber party for her family. “Not really,” she admitted. “We always have a little staff party at the bakery before we close up for the week,” she shrugged. “And then over the last couple years, I’d go over to Jane’s for the night—but that was mostly to help her wrap all her presents because she puts it off ‘til the last minute.” She paused with a smile while Charlotte giggled before she continued. “So I guess no? There’s always some kind of lunch or dinner at Aunt Selma’s or Grams, but that’s not really anything special for Christmas.”

“But what about before?” she asked. “When you were little. Did you ever do anything special when you were a kid?”

Darcy pursed her lips in thought as she reached for a different roll of wrapping paper. “Oh,” she frowned again. Raina had always gone out of her way to make every Christmas a sweet one for her daughter—they’d gone to the winter festival early in December every year and spent at least one Sunday volunteering at one of the local shelters, but as for what Charlotte was asking…nothing was standing out in her mind as something extra special, just for the two of them. “Well, I guess there were the cinnamon rolls,” she said slowly.

Charlotte’s ears perked up. “Cinnamon rolls?”

Darcy nodded. “We’d make them Christmas Eve,” she said with a smile, letting the memory return, soft around the edges from the back of her mind. “She liked making things at home she didn’t make three thousand of at the shop every week.”

“Do you mean _real_ real cinnamon rolls? Or the kind from the can?”

Darcy scoffed again. “No, girl, I’m talking about yeasty dough and hand-rolling and packing them into a pan to rise overnight so they’re big and soft and gooey in the morning. _Real_ real cinnamon rolls.”

Charlotte grinned. “Could we make those this year? Me and you?”

“Of course, we can,” Darcy promised. “I think everyone would love them.”

“They will,” the little girl shrugged, “but I want to do part of your Christmas traditions too—since you’re part of our family now. It’s only fair.”

Darcy swallowed and glanced up again to find Charlotte struggling with aligning the paper for her next present. “I have an idea,” she said suddenly. “I’ll get them wrapped; you make them look pretty. Deal?”

Charlotte looked up with another smile and a definitive nod. “Deal.”

 

***

 

“We had a little meeting at the school today,” Steve said, glancing up as the snow settled on the pine boughs of the wreathes. “Charlotte and this kid, Grayson can’t seem to get along. Mostly,” he added with a nod of consideration, “because that kid is a little shit who can’t keep his hands to himself.” With his breath clouding in front of his face, Steve recounted the episode at the pageant rehearsal and the meeting he’d had to endure with Grayson’s parents and Charlotte’s teacher.

He pushed his hair back and shook his head. “Ugh, these people, Peg. You’d hate ‘em. Absolutely hate them. At one point, though, the mother—real piece of work—goes ‘I can’t imagine this is the kind of behavior Charlotte’s mother would condone if she were here.’” He smiled to himself. “And I actually had to pretend like I was mad enough to leave the room, so I didn’t laugh in her face. Because I’m _sure_ that if you were here, Peg, Charlotte would have already flattened that kid with a single punch.” He sat back and shook his head again. “And honestly, I can’t imagine his mother would have fared much differently if you’d been the one she was talking to instead of me.”

Briefly, the version of the world he’d just imagined flashed before his eyes. The one where the electrician who rewired the student center hadn’t skimped on the right insulation, where there hadn’t been a spark that went unnoticed until it was an inferno out of control, or even just where Peggy, Thompson and Krzeminski went left down the hall instead of right. The version where Peggy had come home that night and every night. Where they’d let Charlotte learn to walk between them, each waiting to catch her if she fell. Where she was there for Charlotte’s first haircut and day of school and loose tooth. Where November 3, 2009 had just been a normal night and not the very worst of his life.

“I always wonder if I should come here more often,” he said softly, looking back down at his hands again. Idly, he ran his thumb over the space where he used to wear his wedding ring. “But I don’t know…most times it doesn’t seem like you’re _here_ ,” he looked up and around the space where the community had made their memorial park. The truth was that Peggy _wasn’t_ there. Her ashes had been taken back to England with her parents, scattered in the rose garden where she’d taken her first steps and played as a little girl, just like she’d asked in her will. But this little spot was all he had here, in New York, where he could assign a tiny piece of the memory of the woman he loved.

“I don’t have to come here to remember you—” The familiar rush of emotion welled in the back of his throat. “I do that every time I look at our little girl.” He smiled again to himself. “She’s so much like you—stubborn and opinionated and bossy…and kind and smart and beautiful. And she’s so loved, Peg. She’s so _so_ loved by so many people.”

Steve stopped and took a deep breath in, pushing at his eyes to chase back the tears. “And she and Darcy are two peas in a pod,” he said after a moment to collect himself. “I don’t know if you had a hand in this,” he added, “but I don’t know if anyone else could have fit so perfectly into this broken little family we had.” His head hung down again. “It was like magic—us finding her. Like someone telling me it was okay to start living again.”

He took another shaky breath. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t still wish you were here. And it doesn’t mean I understand how I can still be as in love with you as I was the last time I saw you, and so in love with her at the same time. And I don’t know why I felt like I had to come and tell you that I’m going to ask her to marry me—because I’m sure you already know that—but I guess I wanted to say it out loud to someone. And there’s no one else who knows me better than you.”

The chill of the stone had begun seeping into his clothes, making it almost painful to stay seated. He rubbed his hands together. “It’s goddamn freezing tonight,” he muttered, sniffling back any lingering tears. “Makes me think of that first Christmas we were together—in my shitty apartment with the old radiators that barely worked.” He smiled ruefully. “I have no idea why you agreed to move in there with me,” he admitted. “Your place was so much nicer.” It was the cold that had reminded him to visit, he realized. The reminder of the apartment they’d first shared—where it was so cold you could see your breath in the morning and walking around without three layers on was asking for pneumonia. Peggy used to joke that fighting fires was the only way either of them had a chance to feel their toes during the winter.

This was the way he remembered his wife. In the way she was sewn so closely into the fabric of his life that something as simple as a gust of wind could bring back a wave of memories, in her expressions that appeared on Charlotte’s face and almost knocked the wind out of him, and in the way that just sitting here, looking at her name could bring him a kind of peace he hadn’t realized he’d been waiting for.

“I should get going,” he admitted, with a reluctant glance at his watch as he got to his feet. “But I guess I just wanted to check in, let you know that we’re doing okay, and that we love you—that we’ll always love you,” he added before he bent down to run his hand over the raised letters. _Captain Margaret “Peggy” Rogers._ “You’re still my best girl, Peg,” he said softly. “Always will be.”

 

***

 

There was a pile of wrapped and bedazzled gifts under the tree by the time he got home and a pile of blankets and people on the couch. Steve heard Boris Karloff reciting the end of _The Grinch_ as he hung up his coat and kicked out of his shoes. Darcy and Charlotte had fallen asleep curled up under the heavy fleece blanket and he stopped to watch them for a minute—Charlotte’s arm thrown over Darcy’s waist, Darcy’s fingers combing through Charlotte’s hair—before he stepped up to Darcy and gently pushed her dark hair out of her face.

She woke up quietly, a flutter of eyelashes and a puzzled scrunch of her nose before she looked up at him. “Oh, hi,” she said softly and glanced at the sleeping girl beside her. “I guess we were more tired than we thought.”

“The presents look nice,” he said as she shuffled to sit up straight without disturbing Charlotte.

Darcy yawned behind a hand. “That’s all her,” she admitted. “That kid’s got a future in bows, I tell ya.”

He grinned as Charlotte stirred and sat up, pushing at her messy blonde hair. “Hi Daddy,” she said blinking fast. “When did you get home?”

“Just now,” he said. “Why don’t you go up to bed? I’ll be up to say goodnight in a minute.”

To his surprise, she nodded sleepily and bid them both a groggy goodnight. Her absence gave him space to sit on the couch and drape an arm across the top, giving Darcy a place to cuddle against him. She hissed as his hand touched her shoulder. “You’re _freezing,_ ” she said and pulled the blanket over to cover them both. “You can’t be getting sick on me,” she insisted. “Charlotte and I have big Christmas plans and we need you at 100%.” She rubbed his bare hands with hers and burrowed closer, trying to share her body heat before she noticed him looking at her a little too long, an unreadable thought in his half-smile. “What?” she asked, feeling suddenly self-conscious and she swiped absently over her hair. “Do I have tape or ribbon or something?”

Steve reached up and took her hand in his, pulling it from her hair and kissed the tips of her fingers. “You’re fine,” he said softly. “Perfect,” he added and let his hand come up to stroke her cheek. “And I love you.”

Darcy leaned in and kissed him softly, her eyes fluttering shut just before their lips touched. Her hair fell forward again and brushed against his cheek, smelling like the sugar and vanilla she unintentionally raked through it all day. “I love you, too,” she said when she pulled back just far enough for him to see her grin. “Even when you’re freezing cold and you put your icy hands on me.”

He chuckled. “Consider it payback for all the times you put your bare feet on me in the middle of the night.”

She rolled her eyes affectionately and untangled herself from him. “Go say goodnight to Charlotte,” she said with a laugh. “I’ll clean up down here.”

Charlotte was already in bed by the time he got to her room, though she’d left her lights and her clothes all over the floor. “I’ll clean up in the morning,” she said when she caught him looking at the mess. “Promise.”

He smiled. “Thank you,” he said, crossing to her desk to turn off the first of two lamps. He sat on the edge of her bed as she snuggled into the covers and pulled them up to her chin.

“Did you go and see Mommy?” she asked as he pushed her hair away from her face.

“Yeah,” he said, his eyebrows lifted in surprise. “How did you know?”

“You had that look,” she said simply. “You only get it when you’re going to talk to Mommy.”

Steve ran his fingers through her hair, curling the ends of it around his fingers, idly wondering if he should schedule her a haircut before she went back to school in January. “You’re pretty perceptive, kiddo,” he said with a shake of his head. “You know,” he added carefully, “you can always ask me if you want to go and talk to her.”

“I know,” she nodded, her eyelids drooping slowly. “But I talk to Mommy all the time,” she said and Steve fought back a sudden swell of emotion that rose in his chest. “But I’ll go with you next time if you want some company.”

He swallowed the lump in his throat and bent to kiss her temple. “Only if you want to, baby,” he said softly. “Go to sleep now, dream something good.”

She smiled and nodded again. “I will,” she agreed. “I love you Daddy.”

“I love you too,” he promised, kissed her again and stood up, turning off her bedside lamp as he did.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Dad Jokes borrowed from Jack Frost starring Pittsburgh's own Michael Keaton.
> 
> Let me know what you think! 
> 
> Share the love on Tumblr @idontgettechnology and check out ishipitpod.com for more fanfic fun
> 
> *blows kisses*


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